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Plato’s Psychology (2nd
Edition)

T.M. ROBINSON
 PLATO'S PSYCHOLOGY

Plato's Psychology, originally published in 1970 and reprinted in 1972, is

still the definitive modern discussion of the nature and development of
Plato's concept of psyche. In a lengthy and detailed new introduction
T.M. Robinson surveys the scope and value of a number of contribu-
tions to Plato's theory of psyche, individual and cosmic, that have
appeared since 1970. He then offers his own 'second thoughts' on vari-
ous aspects of the subject, revisiting inter alia such questions as the dating
of the Timaeus, and the implication thereof, and the understanding and
implications of the myth of the Politicus. Finally, he widens the whole
discussion of Plato's cosmic psychology to include an analysis and
appreciation of the remarkably close relationship between much of
Plato's thinking about the universe and its origins and a good deal of
twentieth-century theorizing, from Einstein to Hawking.
(Phoenix Supplementary Volumes)

T.M. ROBINSON is Professor of Philosophy, University of Toronto.

 PHOENIX
Journal of the Classical Association of Canada
Revue de la Societe canadienne des etudes classiques
Supplementary Volume VIII, second edition
Tome supplementaire VIII, deuxieme edition
 PLATO'S
PSYCHOLOGY

T. M. ROBINSON

Second Edition

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS

Toronto Buffalo London
 © University of Toronto Press Incorporated 1995
Toronto Buffalo London
Printed in Canada
Original edition 1970
Second edition 1995
Reprinted in 2018

1S13N 0-8020-0635-3 (cloth)

ISBN 978-0-8020-7590-1 (paper)

Printed on acid-free paper

Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data

Robinson, T. M. (Thomas More), 1936-
Plato's psychology

(Phoenix. Supplementary volume (Toronto, Ont.) ; 8)

2nd ed.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8020-0635-3 (bound) ISBN 978-0-8020-7590-1 (paper)

I. Plato - Contributions in psychology. I. Title.

II. Series.

128'.3

University of Toronto Press acknowledges the

financial assistance to its publishing program
of the Canada Council and the
Ontario Arts Council.
 ERNAE CONIUGI DILECTAE,

CUI JAM DIU ET VITAM DEDICAVI

Quant' e bella giovinezza,

che si fugge tuttavia!
Chi vuol esser lieto, sia:
di doman non c'e certezza.

Lorenzo de Medici
 Contents

FOREWORD IX

UPON REFLECTION : INTRODUCTION

TO THE SECOND EDITION Xlll

1 The " Socratic" Dialogues 3

2 The Phaedo 21
3 The Republic 34
4 The Timaeus: 27A-47E 59
5 The Timaeus: 48A-end 93
6 The Phaedrus I I I

7 Tripartition, Immortality, and the After-Life 119

8 The Politicus 132
9 The Philebus 140
IO The 1..Aws and the Epinomis 145
II Coda 158
ABBREVIATIONS 164
BIBLIOGRAPHY 166
INDEXES 177
 Foreword

The following pages are an attempt to fill what seems to be an important

gap io current literature on the philosophy of Plato. Since the war a large
amount of work has been done on his Theory of Knowledge, and this has
thrown light on a number of hitherto dark comers in the dialogues. That
other "pillar of Platonism," however, the doctrine of psyche (soul, mind),
has only received sporadic attention, and this is surprising, since a Theory of
Mind and a Theory of Knowledge would appear to be very closely linked .
In a century not a single comprehensive work on Plato's notion of psyche has
appeared in English. In 1862 A.-Ed. Chaignet produced a work entitled
De la Psychologie de Platon, but the work is so instinct with his own brand
of (philosophical) idealism that the Plato of the dialogues is seldom given an
impartial hearing. A better book, J. Simson's Der &grijf der Seele bei Plato11,
appeared in 1889. This has the great merit of treating Plato's own words
dispassionately, and references to the text of the dialogues are used to corro-
borate practically every general statement. The only trouble is that the book
is too slight to be comprehensive. What it says, as far as it goes, is admirable,
but it does not go far enough. Nearer our own times, H. Barth's Die Seele
in der Philosophie Platons was published in 1921, and this can only be con-
sidered retrogressive. As in the case of Chaignet' s monograph, Barth's book
is so riddled with his own philosophical prejudices (this time in the direction
of Lebensphilosophie) as to be rendered almost valueless.
The present study attempts to give as lucid and comprehensive an
account as possible of all that Plato has to say on the nature of psyche,
personal and cosmic, in each of the dialogues. This inevitably involves a good
deal of interpretation, but I have tried, as much as possible, to let the texts
speak for themselves. As far as the doctrine of"personal" psyche is concerned,
the dialogues, I argue, suggest no particular "development" on Plato's part.
On the contrary, he appears to use particular "models" of psyche (uniform,
bipartite, tripartite, etc.) to suit particular contexts, and seems to be peculiarly
 X FOREWORD

unbound by dogmatism in this regard till the end of his life. As for the
notion of ''cosmic" psyche, it is suggested that there is some development
here, though many obscurities still remain.
The relative order of the dialogues is a problem every student of Plato
must face, and I have followed generally accepted opinions except in the case
of the Timaeus and the Phaedrus, which I tentatively place (in that order)
soon after the Republic. To defend this would demand another book; suffice
it for the moment to say that the move seems to me to make Plato's cosmic
psychology and cosmo-theology follow a more comprehensible pattern of
development than has been suggested hitherto. Though this is my own
opinion on the matter, I hope that it has not so influenced my analysis of the
"later" dialogues that the reader will be precluded from forming his own
judgment on the basis of what Plato says on any particular occasion. For
that, ultimately, is the aim of the book - to put the reader into a position
where he can make up his own mind concerning particular problems on the
basis of precise and, one hopes, unbiassed exposition of the relevant texts.
In this sense I should like to see myself as performing that "under-labourer's"
task of which Locke speaks in the Essay.
The translation of the term psyche is always difficult. Is it "soul," or
"mind," or "person"? Translators are in constant disagreement. After much
thought I finally opted for the uniform translation "soul," on the grounds
that this would be the least misleading. For the term "soul," to most people
(including those who reject it as nonsense), suggests an "inner person" or
"ghost in the machine" (to use Ryle's phrase) that is, in my opinion, very
close to Plato's usual view on the matter. The translation "mind," though
occasionally useful in those few contexts (like the Phaedo) in which psyche is
seen as an almost totally intellective principle, is misleading in those many
more contexts where intellect is seen as only one of a number of subdivisions
of psyche. It would be less misleading, of course, if it could be assumed that
every reader of this book adhered to a Rylean view of mind; but this is
hardly likely to be the case.
I have used standard translations throughout, reducing them to uni-
formity in one respect only- that of translating fuxiJ in every instance as
"soul." Apart from the Timaeus and parts of the Republic, where I employ
Cornford's translations, a few passages of the Phaedo, where I have used
Hackforth' s translation, and a few passages of the Corgi as, where I have
used the Jowett translation, all translations are drawn from The Collected
Dialogues of Plato, edited by Hamilton and Cairns (Bollingen Series LXXI).
Unless otherwise indicated, the Greek text that I have followed is that of
 FOREWORD XI

Burnet (Oxford University Press 1900-7). I must also thank the editors of the
following journals for permission to use material which originally appeared
~r
in them: The A111ericat1 journal Philology (LXXXVIII (1967) 57-66), Phronesis
(xn (1967) 147-51), and Apeiron ((1968) 12-18).
To keep abreast of all Platonic scholarship (even within a specialized
area) is a formidable, if not impossible, task. If I have come anywhere near
success in this regard, it is largely the result of constant reference to the out-
standing Bibliography of Platonic Scholarship published in Lustrum ( 1959-60)
by Professor H. Cherniss. For works appearing in more recent years I have
relied for my bibliographical information upon L'A1111ee philologique and the
Bulletin signaletique. Even so, a number of items were (inevitably) over-
looked, and I should like to draw attention to them now, since they came to
my notice too late for me to use: D. J. Schulz Das Problem der Materie in
Platons Timaios Bonn 1966; H.J. Easterling "Causation in the Timaeus and
Laws x" Eranos LXV (1967) 25-38; M. Corvez "Le Dieu de Platon" Re,,11e
philosophique de Louvain LXV (1967) 5-35;]. B. Skemp The Theory of Motion
in Plato's Later Dialogues 2 Amsterdam 1967.
No doubt there are more such items; but I have every confidence that,
Platonic scholarship being the maze that it is, their authors will be under-
standing, and will attribute the omission to my ignorance of the existence of
their contributions, rather than to any unwillingness on my part to consider
them.
Finally, it is my pleasant task to thank the many scholars who have
offered advice on particular topics. In particular I should like to mention
Dr. D. A. Rees, of Jesus College, Oxford, and Professors G. M. A. Grube
and D. Gallop of the University of Toronto. Of course, this in no way
commits them to the contents of the book; I myself take full responsibility
for that. But their advice made me re-consider large tracts of the argument,
and almost invariably, I think, for the better. If occasionally I stuck stub-
bornly to my original opinion, I cheerfully accept what blame and retribution
may come my way.
This book has been published with the help of grants from the Humani-
ties Research Council, using funds provided by the Canada Council, and
from the Publications Fund of the University of Toronto Press. I should like
to thank Miss Prudence Tracy, of the same press, for her careful and good-
humoured supervision of the manuscript from its earliest stages through to
publication.
T.M.R.
Toronto,June 1969
 Upon Reflection
Introduction to the
Second Edition

A second edition of Plato's Psychology offers a welcome opportunity to

reflect on some of the work that has been published in the area since
its first appearance 1 and also to re-examine some of its more contro-
versial positions on various issues. In each instance I stress the word
"some"; to cover in detail all of the literature or discuss in detail all of
the discussable issues would necessitate another book, if not several. I
have in practice confined myself to matters on which I have over the
years significantly changed my mind, or where I have gone on to pro-
pound new ideas not canvassed in the original edition. This means
that my discussion dwells largely on items in the last seven, rather
than the first three, chapters of the book, and confines itself almost
entirely to the question of cosmic, rather than individual, soul;
though much has been written in recent years on, for example, Plato's
theory of the tripartition of the human soul, little has, I think, been
said on the matter that would dispose me to make more than minor
changes in the account I first set out. The original work itself is
reprinted untouched, in the hope that the basic drift of its argument,
and the accumulation of detailed references to central texts in the dia-
logues, makes it still worthy of attention.
A notable feature of the first edition was its stress on the impor-
tance of having some general understanding of the periods into which

1 More detailed bibliographic information can be found in Richard D. Mohr, The Platonic
Cosmoloj?y (Leiden 1985) 189--91; Luc Brisson, Platon: Timee/Critias (Paris 1992) 79--<)J; and
Peter M. Steiner, Psyche bei Platon ((Gottingen 1992) 219-38. To their lists should be added a
work that includes a detailed investigation of Plato's theory of soul, individual and cosmic: E.
N. Ostenfeld, Forms, Matter and Mind: Three Strands in Plato's Metaphysics (The Hague 1982);
for a careful and detailed review the book, see J. B. Skemp, CR 40 ( 1990) 62-5.
 XIV UPON REFLECTION

Plato's dialogues fall, if one is to have any hope of understanding

whether there was any movement in his thinking on various issues
across a writing-lifetime. My view on this has not changed, except
that now I would be less inclined to talk about Platonic "doctrine"
on such and such an issue at such and such a time in his writing life
and more inclined to talk rather of explorations. The shift of terminol-
ogy may be thought slight, but it is still, I think, significant, in that it
allows for the influence of the dialogue-form in Plato's writings in a
way that my original work only glancingly adverted to. That said, it is
important to add that there do still appear to exist certain broad issues
in the dialogues which are clearly of ongoing, not to say passionate,
interest to Plato and where (pace all unitarians) sometimes major move-
ment in his thinking - even if only for a passing period of time - can
be discerned. And one such issue is the role and status of psyche in his
vision of the universe.
On the critical matter of the dating of certain key dialogues, I
would now place the Timaeus early in Plato's final period, rather than at
the end of his middle period, with the Politicus in close proximity to it
in the same period and the Phaedrus in turn somewhat later in that final
period. While this decision has a little to do with stylometric research
(which continues apace), it is to a much larger extent the result of fur-
ther reflection on the concept of soul as self-activating agent or, in more
precise Platonic terms, self-moving motion, a concept I continue to fail
to find in the Timaeus, am now satisfied is not to be found in the Politi-
cus, and take to be central to the Phaedrus and the LAws.
As far as the Timaeus in particular is concerned, a reading of
Leonard Brandwood's recent volume 2 now makes clear what was not
evident in his article of 1960, 3 that is that the Timaeus was for him not
simply posterior in composition to the Republic but actually to be placed
at the beginning of the final group of dialogues. This is a view that I am,
as it happens, very glad to subscribe to, not on grounds of the particular
stylometric analysis of it by Brandwood, which has, it seems to me,
been very much overtaken in recent years by more refined and sophisti-

2 Leonard Brandwood, The Chronology ~f Plato's Dialogues (Cambridge 1990).

3 D. R. Cox and L. Brandwood, "On a Discriminatory Problem Connected with the Works
of Plato," Journal ef the Royal Statistical Society Series B, 21.1 (1959) 195-200.
 INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION xv

cated forms of analysis, 4 but on grounds of content. Such a view, it

should be added, in no way turns on any assumption that immediately
after the Parmenides Plato abandoned the Theory of Forms; all that is
required is an assumption that from that point on Plato was looking
with a more critical eye at the theory and was testing out alternative or
parallel methods of philosophical investigation, such as Collection and
Division, or the notion of forms as universal characters in re (a respect-
able and viable interpretation, it seems to me, of what may well have
been his last words on the matter, at LAws 965c).
Where the Parmenides fits into the picture is unclear. On my earlier
reading, I followed G. E. L. Owen in placing it after the Timaeus in
order of composition. This now seems to me no longer necessary. All
that I think emerges from the dialogue is that Plato is possibly disturbed
by some of the criticisms of the theory that have been put forward, par-
ticularly the so-called "third man" argument, but is satisfied that a form-
theory of some sort is necessary if one is not to "destroy the significance
of all discourse" (135c). One such version will be that found in the
Timaeus, where the Form of the Good has been abandoned as a puta-
tively efficient cause (Rep. 508BC) and all Forms now play solely a para-
digmatic role in the scheme of things.
Turning to the detailed discussion of the concept of psyche in vari-
ous chapters of the first edition of Plato's Psychology, l shall begin with
the two chapters devoted to one of the most controversial of Plato's
writings, the Timaeus. For clarity's sake I shall divide up my comments
under six headings: a) metaphysical principles; b) the "likelihood" of the
account; c) soul as self-moving; d) Demiurge as a soul; e) the role of
space as "sustainer" of the cosmos; and f) space, time, pre-time, and
contemporary cosmological theory.

4 See, for example, D. Wishart and S. V. Leach, "A Multivariate Analysis of Platonic Prose
Rhythm," Computer Studies in the Humanities and Verbal Behavior 3 (1970) 9<r9. Much more
sophisticated again in terms of techniques of investigation is G. R. Ledger, Re-counting Plato:
A Computer Analysis ~f Plato's Style (Oxford 1989) xiv, 254. But the overall approach of Ledger
is still unsatisfactory in a number of ways, and leads him to conclusions that many will find
unacceptable. For lengthy critiques of the work see Debra Nails, "Platonic Chronology
Reconsidered," Bryn Mawr Classical Review 3:4 (1992) 314-27; T. M. Robinson, "Plato and
the Computer," Ancient Philosophy 12 (1992) 375-82; and Charles M. Young, "Plato and
Computer Dating," Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 12 (1994) 227-50.
 XVI UPON REFLECTION

A) METAPHYSICAL PRINCIPLES

The original edition was already in press by the time two critical articles
by John Whittaker5 appeared. This was a pity, given their importance
for our understanding of the metaphysical principles underlying the dia-
logue, including its philosophical psychology. If Whittaker is right, and I
believe he is, the adverb aei, which appears in the Oxford text at 28A 1,
was never part of Plato's argument. He was not, in other words, setting
out to compare the eternal stability of the world of Forms with the eternal
instability of the world of space-time, but rather contrasting the eternal
stability of any Form - an eternity naturally characterized by a lack of
ever coming-into-being for that Form - and the temporal instability of any
sense-object, a temporality bounded in each and every case by a
moment of beginning in time and a moment of dissolution in time.
With this distinction as his basis for argument, Plato then goes on to
outline the three defining features of a sense-object - visibility, touch-
ability, and the possession of bulk. Finding these three features to be
precisely the defining features of the world as well, he concludes that the
world too is a sense-object, and hence, like all sense-objects, something
that must also have had a beginning in time.
It is a powerful argument, though dangerously exposed to the criti-
cism that it may involve a critical fallacy of composition. And it makes
excellent and precise use of the ontological distinction between an
(eternal) Form and a (temporal) sense-object with which it began. On
the contrary understanding, in which ontological constituents of two
eternal universes are supposedly being contrasted, the only conclusion
that would have constituted something approaching sound logic would
have been that the world of our acquaintance "is in an eternal state of
coming into being." But the trenchant "it has come into being"
(yeyove) - a statement uttered in advance of any talk about the details of
such a coming-into-being or their "likelihood" as details - makes it
clear that, unless he is to be accused of near-total confusion in his think-
ing, Plato meant us to infer from his argument that the world of our
acquaintance had a beginning in time.

5 "Timae1<s 27D5 ff ," Phoenix 23 (1969) 131-44; "Textual comments on Timae1<s 27c -D,"
Phoenix 27 (1973) 387---91.
 INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION xvu

B) THE "LIKELIHOOD" OF THE ACCOUNT

As far as the details of the account of the world's formation in time are
concerned, the implications of the phrases "likely account (A6yo~)" and
"likely story (µv0o~)" continue to arouse spirited discussion. Since I did
not discuss the matter in my first edition, and now feel more deeply its
importance for an overall understanding of the dialogue's philosophical
psychology, I shall take this opportunity to state my position.
It is of some, though only passing, interest that the phrase "likely
A6yo~" is used in the dialogue with much greater frequency than the
phrase "likely µv0o~." 6 More important, and frequently understressed,
are the implications of the adjective "likely" in each of the two phrases,
a word clearly chosen for its affinity with the "likeness" (eiKwv) of the
world of our acqaintance to the world of Forms. Nor is this likeness
"merely" a likeness; the adverb has been imported into the translation
by Cornford and others, with, I think, unfortunate effects. It is a like-
ness, no more and no less, and as such will enjoy the ontological status
enjoyed by all (sense-) objects, including, one can assume, the ability to
become the object of true opinion (cf. 38A1), though never, of course,
of knowledge proper.
What constitutes true opinion in this particular case Plato admits to
be disputed, but his own claims in the matter are clear. His own
account, he says, is not only "likely" in the minimal sense of "no less
likely than any other" (29C7-8), it is in fact "especially (µa,\icrra) likely
"(44C7-01) and "more probable" (my italics) than any other (48D3). So
if Plato, as he does on three occasions, also refers to the account as a
µv0o~, one can assume that he is using the word in its common sense of
"story" or "tale" (as in, "He lived to tell the tale"), a sense, of course,
fully compatible with the standard sense of A6yo~.
If this understanding of Plato's statements is correct, we are left with
no good reason for believing that the dialogue is to be understood figu-
ratively in its overall description of how the world of our acquaintance
came to be, though the details of the account, like the details of any Pla-
tonic "true opinion," will always remain an opinion rather than knowl-

6 There are three uses of µfi(Jo,; and over a dozen of ,\6-yo,;. For the exact references see Bris-
son, Platon, 70, nn. 8 5, 86. That the terms are used synonymously in the dialogue seems clear
from 29c4-n3, where they appear - apparently interchangeably - within the compass of a
single sentence.
 xvm UPON REFLECTION

edge, and to that degree will always remain something that is at least
logically further corrigible.

C) SOUL AS SELF-MOVING

It continues to be argued that there is evidence in the Timaeus for Plato's

espousal of the view, set out in fairly precise detail at Phaedrus 245c, that
all (rational) soul - including in this case World Soul - is an eternally
self-activating agent or eternally self-moving movement, a point which,
if true, would constitute evidence that, despite what has been argued
above, Plato did indeed mean his account of the world's formation to be
read figuratively after all. Since this was not a matter which occupied
much of my attention in the first edition, I again avail myself gratefully
of the opportunity to address it now.
A natural place to begin is at 37B, where we read of "discourse that
is alike true, whether it takes place concerning that which is different or
that which is the same, being carried on without speech or sound
within the thing that is self-moved." The "thing" in question, as Cornford
saw, is the universe as a whole. What is far from evident, however, pace
Cornford and many others, is that its self-motion is the result of the
supposed self-motion of its own i/JVxfJ. For four types of self-motion
need to be clearly distinguished. First there is self-movement in the
commonest sense, that is the self-movement that characterizes any living
thing as distinct from, say, a stone. No particular theory of i/JVxfJ goes
with such a view; a Democritus could subscribe to it just as much as a
Plato or, for that matter, any other Greek, however unphilosophically
inclined. Next there is the everlasting,7 but everlastingly contingent 8 self-
movement of rational soul (be it rational human soul or World Soul)
that is forever in a state of dependence on an eternal efficient cause.

7 By this I mean a form of duration characterized by a beginning in time but no end. for
discussion of this and other concepts of duration in the Timaeus, see T. M . Robinson, "The
Timaeus on Types of Duration," lllinois Classical Studies 11 (1987) 143-5 I.
8 I use the term in its time-honoured metaphysical/ cosmological sense, rather than in its
contemporary logico-linguistic sense. I also use it in its unencumbered sense of simple depen-
dence on another entity, such that the thing in queston cannot account for its existence and/
or intrinsic features or activities without reference to that entiry; there is no further implica-
tion in my usage (nor, I think, any clear evidence in Plato's dialogues) of the subsequently
elaborated notion of a single "necessary" being as the implicandum of contingent being. (On
the distinction between existence and intrinsic features or activities, see below, n. 26.)
 INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION XIX

Then there is the sempiternal, 9 but sempiternally contingent self-move-

ment of all soul (rational or otherwise) that is forever in a state of depen-
dence on an eternal efficient cause and perhaps also on an eternal
paradigmatic 10 cause or causes. And finally there is the eternal self-move-
ment of the aptur1J t/JvxiJ (Laws 897c7), a self-movement accurately
describable as being wholly uncontingent if by that stage of his writing
life Plato had abandoned the notion of transcendental Forms, and as
being still contingent if he had not.
These distinctions among types of duration in Plato have been
argued for elsewhere (see above, n. 6). Suffice it to say here that in the
Timaeus Plato seems to have in mind only the first and second types of
duration, and only the first and second are, in fact, necessary for his
arguments to go through. At 37B the self-motion of the world is of the
second type - that is, everlasting and contingent, as is the self-motion of
its soul; the whole burden of the account is to show that, whatever the
uncertainty of assurance about details, the physical world of our
acquaintance and its soul each have a beginning in time and are depen-
dent for their existence upon a cause other than themselves. As for the
other two references to self-motion in the dialogue, both seem to be
straightforward instances of the first type. At 77c4-5 the plant's lack of
self-motion means no more than its inability to move from place to
place; and at 89A1-3 the self-motion produced "in oneself and by one-
self" is in context a clear reference to gymnastic exercise and the like.
Nowhere, as far as I have been able to discover, is there a reference, or
even a hint of a reference, in the dialogue to the sempiternal self-motion
which is the essential feature of soul as Plato describes it at Phaedrus
245c.

D) THE DEMIURGE AS SOUL

The question of the role and ontological status of the Demiurge, like
the question of the "likelihood" of the so-called "creation myth" in the

9 By this I mean a form of duration which, like everlastingness, characterizes the physical
(whether consisting of formed objects or simply of the 'iXPTJ of those objects), but is without
beginning or end.
ro The term is employed to refer to the type of causality exercised by the transendental
Forms, though in the somewhat richer sense involving "nourishment" in which Plato seems
to have intended it; see below, p. xxix.
 xx UPON REFLECTION

Timaeus, has also continued to spark lively discussion. 11 As far as

attempts to reduce him to World Soul, or to one of the features of
World Soul, are concerned, these seem to me to founder on two basic
points. The first is the near-inconceivability, as I see it, of the likelihood
that Plato would in such careful detail describe World Soul as a contin-
gent entity (that is, an entity formed by and depending for its existence
upon something other than itself) yet have in mind that we understand
it as non-contingent. The second point, already mentioned, is the com-
plete lack in the dialogue of any reference to World Soul as eternally
self-moving or even self-moving at all. While the latter point is admit-
tedly only an argumentum ex silentio, it still seems to me worth putting
forward in this instance, not least because of the difficulty the matter
poses to reductionists themselves.
Among those for whom the Demiurge is a reality and not merely a
symbol for something else, there is disagreement whether he is to be
taken as simply intelligence or as ensouled intelligence. A well-argued
case for the former position has been presented by Richard D. Mohr. 12
A particularly persuasive point he makes, following Proclus, is that
Timaeus 30B3 is best understood as affirming that when reason is in
something, that something will be a soul, rather than as affirming that if a
thing is rational, then it is a soul. And a strong challenge is also offered
by Mohr to the commonly held view that Sophist 249A maintains that
everything that is rational is soul. Concluding from this that for Plato
soul operates only in the realm of movement and change, characteristics
that cannot belong to the world's supreme principle, he affirms with
Hackforth that the Demi urge can only have been thought of by Plato as
pure, unchanging intelligence.
But must this conclusion be drawn? The only items in Plato's onto-
logical schema that are unequivocally unchanging are the Forms, so
much so that he even conjures up a striking phrase to describe the

11 Amid an extensive literature I would draw attention to Cornford, Cherniss, and Taran
among the more established names of those who take the whole matter figuratively; more
recent exponents of the view include E. N. Ostenfeld (above, n. 1) and G. R. Carone, "Sobre
el significado y el status del demiurgo de( Timeo," Methexis 3 1990 33-49, and LA Noci6n de Dios
en el Timeo de Plat6n (Buenos Aires 1991) 79-84. Among the more established names of those
who take the Demiurge and his formative action seriously are Taylor, Hackforth, and Guthrie;
the most articulate recent exponent of the thesis is Richard D. Mohr, The Platonic Cosmology.
12 Mohr, The Platonic Cosmology, 178-83.
 INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION XXI

unique nature of their unchangingness TO KaTa TavTa w<TavTw~

13
exeLV ae{ - and a striking adjective to describe the unique quality of
the eternity of their duration - OLaLWVLO~. The gods, by contrast,
including presumably the Demiurge, manifest some or all of the charac-
teristics he eventually finishes up listing as specific characteristics of
(rational) soul: "wish, reflection, foresight, counsel, judgement, true or
false, pleasure, pain, hope, fear, hate, love" (LAws 896E-897A), and all of
these he unequivocally classifies as KLVTJ<T€L~ (ibid.). 14 So he is not, on
the face of it, committed to the view that his efficient cause is unchang-
ing, but rather that the paradigmatic causes are.
Just how fearless in this matter Plato can be is demonstrated, it
seems to me, by a passage in the Phaedrus where he affirms that it is
proximity to the Forms that makes the gods themselves divine. It is the
only time in the dialogues he says it so clearly, and one of a number of
implications to be drawn from his words is that he was prepared, at cer-
tain moments in his intellectual odyssey at any rate, to face the possibil-
ity that the efficient cause which is divinity might have a lower
ontological status - and that includes characterization by KLVT/<TL~ - in
his total scheme of things than has paradigmatic cause.
I conclude from this that there is no reason to reject the notion of
the Demiurge's being not just intelligence but ensouled intelligence
simply on the grounds that this would commit us to the conclusion that
he would be thereby subject to KLVT/<TL~. Nor am I perturbed by the fur-
ther argument that since soul is for the Plato of the Timaeus a composite
entity, he would not have argued that the efficient cause of soul was of a
similar order, that is, another composite entity. 15 For, on the one hand,
nothing is said in the Timaeus about the soul of the Demiurge one way
or another. On the other hand, given the safe assumption that the
Demiurge's soul was deemed by Plato to be eternal, as the Demiurge
himself is unequivocally said to be eternal, it is highly likely that his soul
would, for reasons first laid down in detail in the Phaedo, have been

13 At lAws 898A8-9 the phrase recurs, but this time referring to cosmic intelligence. Little,
however, should be based on this, since a) it is almost certainly a dialogue posterior in com-
position to the Timaeus, and b) it is quite possible that by that stage Plato had in fact aban-
doned the theory of Forms as transcendental realities (see above, p. xv).
14 Of this list "foresight" and "love" are foreshadowed in the Gorgias as the "care" for the body
(464ll6}, and the others are to be found passim in such dialogues as the Phaedo and Republic.
I 5 Mohr, The Platonic Cosmology, 183 .
 xxn UPON REFLECTION

thought by Plato to be in fact non-composite, not composite. And in

such a case - preserving Mohr's basic point, which is certainly sound -
Plato would in fact be affirming from yet another perspective that the
soul of the world's efficient cause is both genuinely a soul and, at the
same time, wholly different from all other species of soul.

E) THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE WORDS qJBpeU0aL AND ae{

Further reflection has led me over the years to conclude that in Plato's
account of the universe and its soul the words </Jepeu0ai and aeC, the
first of which receives no mention in my first edition and the second
very little, are in fact of critical importance and have the distinction of
having been consistently mistranslated and misunderstood by commen-
tators. The frequent result, for many of these commentators, has been
an apparent bolstering of the view that the world of the Timaeus is in
fact an eternal world of unceasing motion, not a world that had a begin-
ning in time. But nothing, it seems to me, could be further from the
truth.
The case I wish to make has been laid out in detail elsewhere. 16
Suffice it for the moment to reiterate that the natural sense of </Jepeiv is
to "support" (as a pedestal supports a statue) or "carry" (as a ship carries
passengers). As such, it is the perfect verb to suggest sustainment or con-
tingency. So it is not the nature of the Wandering Cause at Timaeus
48A7 to "set in motion" (Harward, Cornford, Taran), but rather to "sus-
tain in motion"; its role is here described with precision as being that of
a matrix, rather than that of a trigger-mechanism. 17 The same idea is to
be found at 40B1-2; the rrepi</Jopa of the Same in World Soul is not
simply a "revolution" (Cornford) but rather a "circular carrying-motion"
on the part of the Same which gives to each star its specific forward
motion. Similarly, at 38A5-6 "Timaeus affirms of eternal, as distinct
from any other reality, that 'nothing belongs to it of all that Becoming
attached to things borne along (</Jepoµevoi~) in <the world of?> sense.'
Indeed, part of the exact definition of a sense-object is that, unlike a

16 T. M. Robinson, "Two Key Concepts in Plato's Cosmology," Methexis 7 (1994) (in press).
17 Which is not to deny that on another occasion and in a different context in the Timaeus
Plato is happy to talk ofit as sempiternally moving and being moved by its own contents. It is
simply that this is not a notion that can be excavated out of the use of the verb </>epeLII.
 INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION XXIJI

Form, which is unchanging and uncontingent, it 1s 'invariably the

object of </>opa' (1re</>oprJµivov ad)." 18
While for Plato the world and its contents under discussion here are
also clearly objects in motion as well, what is being stressed in this con-
text is the fact of their being invariably subject to <f>opa - that is, their
contingent status. But my translation "invariably" must also be
defended, and again I refer to a previously penned statement:
One reason why commentators so frequently mistranslate <f>opa and
</>ipecr8m, it may be speculated, is that on two notable occasions,
both involving discussion of sense-objects (52A6, 52c3), the adverb
ae{ governs the verb </>ipecr8m. Given Plato's clear commitment to
the view that such objects have at best a toe-hold on unchanging
reality and are accurately describable as never ceasing from move-
ment and change, a loose but misleading translation in terms of
"unceasing movement" is in the context understandable, and may
well be the reason for other equally loose translations, by various
scholars, of </>ipw and its compounds in other parts of the dialogue in
terms of simple movement rather than sustention in movement. But
the adverb ae{ is itself notoriously ambiguous, and its possible inter-
pretation as "invariably," or "on each and every occasion" must
always be tested in context as a possibility before we settle upon such
other possibilities as the translations "eternally" or "everlastingly."
A good example of where such an interpretation seems in con-
text to be called for, apart from the example of 1re<f>op7Jµivov ae{
mentioned above, is to be found at 4904-5. In this passage Plato is
not, pace Cornford, saying "Whenever we see something perpetu-
ally changing, etc.,'·' but rather "on each and every occasion that we
see something coming into being, etc." The same holds true for
later passages in the same argument: at E5 Timaeus is referring, not
to what "perpetually recurs (as similar) in the cycle" (Cornford) but
rather to "that which invariably recurs as similar"; and at E7-8 he is
referring not to that "in which all of them are always coming to be"
(Cornford), but rather to "that in which each of them invariably
comes to be."' 9

18 Robinson, "Two Key Concepts."

19 Ibid.
 XXIV UPON REFLECTION

If I am right in my interpretation here, there is nothing in what

Timaeus has been saying above to suggest that the universe of sense-
experience has been eternally subject to motion, or that such eternal
motion is caused by the presence of an eternally self-moving soul. All
that is being described - and very powerfully described - is the nature of
Space and World Soul as sustaining entities, along with the qualities that
invariably characterize what they sustain.

F) SPACE, TIME, PRE-TIME , AND CONTEMPORARY

C OSMOLOGI C AL THEORY

As in the case of the terms <f>epeu8ai and aei, further reflection over
the years has led me to draw a number of conclusions about the rela-
tionship between the Timaeus and contemporary cosmological theory, a
relationship which has been barely noticed, yet seems to me quite
remarkable.
One can begin by discussing this relationship. Why, if it is apparently
so obvious, has it been so largely passed over? The answer, as it happens,
is disarmingly clear: it is because till very recently the majority of inter-
preters have read the dialogue's account of the world's formation figura-
tively, not literally. The result has been that several of Plato's most
astonishing cosmological insights, being deemed to be purely figurative,
have gone unnoticed, as has, afortiori, any supposed relationship between
those insights and contemporary cosmology. Once, however, the dia-
logue is read in the way it seems to me it was intended to be, Plato's pow-
erful cosmological imaginativeness, comparable in its own way to that of
Galileo and Einstein, is finally allowed to emerge into the daylight.
As far as the concept of space is concerned, what is revolutionary
about Plato's concept of it in the Timaeus is that, far from being pure
emptiness or pure nothingness, it is a reality, and a reality moreover in
sempiternal motion, forever sustaining in motion its own contents and
forever itself kept in motion by the movement of those contents. As far
as those contents are concerned, they are, as Cornford rightly stressed,
simply the traces of matter, not matter as such, and so more properly
conceived of in qualitative rather than quantitative terms.
As for time, this is unequivocally described as having a beginning,
that beginning coinciding with the first moment of the universe of our
acquaintance; the physically real as such is, of course, by contrast sem-
 INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION XXV

piternal in duration. No word is offered by Plato for the manner of dura-

tion of the pre-cosmos, but duration of some sort it does appear to have,
as his account of the operation of primitive centrifugal and centripetal
forces within it "antecedent to" Demiurgic intervention indicates.
The relationship between these thoughts and much contemporary
theory, at the level of what one could call cosmological imaginativeness
if nothing else, seems to me very striking. It has been for some time a
majority opinion among cosmologists that space is a) a reality, and b)
expanding, its expansion affected in direct correlation by the commen-
surate expansion of its own contents. Whether the theory will stand the
test of fresh evidence and further experimentation time will no doubt
tell. My point is not that current cosmological fashion is correct, but
that Plato, were he to be alive today, would find himself among thinkers
who consider the concept of space as a reality in motion, with that
motion itself causally related to the motion of its own contents, to be a
theory worth discussing, rather than an aberration of the Master to be
somehow explained away.
It is equally part of the same current majority opinion that time did
in fact have a beginning, that beginning coinciding with the beginning
of the world of our acquaintance. What "preceded" that beginning is as
much a puzzle now as it was no doubt to Plato and his first readers; but
the puzzle has not stopped them from propounding the theory, on the
simple grounds that for all its difficulties it still looks for the moment to
be a better theory than any of its competitors.
The affinities become even more remarkable when we turn to that
variant on the expansion (or Big Bang) theory of space and its contents,
the so-called Oscillation Theory, a matter which will be touched upon
below when we re-examine, as we shall do now, the myth of the Politicus.

In the first edition I placed the Politicus some time after the Timaeus
and Phaedrus (in that order), satisfied as I was that the Politicus referred to
World Soul as being self-moving, albeit in the sense of being contin-
gently self-moving (the soul that is the Demiurge being of course the
non-contingent self-mover); on this understanding the myth of the
Politicus attempted to combine views drawn from the Timaeus and Phae-
drus . l have since then become persuaded by the arguments of Mohr, 20

20 Mohr, The Platonic Cosmology, 141, n. J.

 XXVI UPON REFLECTION

and by my own further reflection on concepts of duration in Plato, that

this is not the case. Any supposed self-movement of World Soul in the
Politicus will be, by extrapolation at best, and not on Plato's direct state-
ment, an example, identical to that outlined for World Soul in the
Timaeus, of, at the highest level, merely the second in my earlier list of
types of self-movement: that is, the everlastingly contingent (rather than
sempiternally contingent) self-movement of an entity forever in a state
of dependence on an eternally efficient cause. 21 As in the Timaeus,
World Soul is also fashioned by the Demiurge at a point in time which
is the first moment of time, all that physically exists "antecedent" to that
moment being in chaotic, unpredictable motion and totally devoid of
the presence of soul. This being the case, there is no need after all to
adduce the carefully formulated argument of Phaedrus 245c to explain
what is happening in the Politicus; Plato is not saying there that any soul
other than the presumptive soul of the Demiurge is in fact eternal. I am
accordingly happy to return to the view of Skemp that the dialogue's
date of composition is very likely to be close to that of the Timaeus.
I have also, upon further reflection, become satisfied that there is no
need to attribute any degree of irrational behaviour to World Soul in
this dialogue; its ovµ<pvTo~ brd)vµia can be adequately explained as a
(rational) urge towards circular movement, the "backward" nature of
that circularity and any attendant chaos being accounted for by the con-
straints of what Plato calls "the physical."
Mention of the latter brings us back to the Oscillation Theory
mentioned above, in which is envisaged the possibility of an expansion
of space and its contents to a point where, exhausted as it were, they
reverse direction and begin a journey of contraction, all the way back to
the primordial atomic conglomerate, from which point of departure a
new expansion can be expected to begin, and so on, possibly ad infini-
tum. The notion as such is very much tied to that of four-dimensional-

21 At 269E5-6 we read how "to revolve ever in the same direction belongs to none but the
lord and leader of all things in movement." I still follow Taylor and others in taking this to be
a reference to the Demiurge. But if Brisson (Platon , 479, n. 7) is right in seeing it rather as a
reference to World Soul, it remains, I would argue, World Soul as described in the Timaeus ,
that is, an ever/as tin~ soul and one everlastingly contingent upon the efficient causality of a soul
other than and ontologically higher than itself, not the eternally self-moving soul later defined
at Phdr. 245c that is contingent upon no soul ontologically higher than itself, though very
likely contingent upon the paradigmatic causality of the Forms (see below, p. xxix).
 INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION XXVll

ity, but it seems to me that Plato nonetheless comes remarkably close to

affirming it, given the constraint that - like everyone else until Einstein
- he thought of the universe in solely three-dimensional terms. Within
that constraint he has, it seems to me, come up with the most imagina-
tive model antecedent to our own century of a universe characterized
by both entropy and gravitational force, a universe whose overall move-
ment he finally sees to be more akin to something like a suspended
orrery than to a top (the model he seems to have had in mind when
composing the Timaeus). 22
On this new model, Plato can finally offer a powerfully compelling
description of how the world might, across aeons, run down and then be
brought back to its pristine state, perhaps ad infinitum, all, of course, on his
understanding within the constraints of overall contingency upon a sus-
taining cause. 23 Like the notion of moving space in the Timaeus, however,
the view has never been taken seriously, not least because this time the
context is overtly one of myth. But myth is precisely the place where one
needs to look on occasion for Plato's greatest demonstration of philo-
sophical imaginativeness, the place where, freed from the bonds of dia-
logue-form, he can finally take a few risks and think a few unthinkable
thoughts. And in so doing he sometimes joins ranks, for the while, with
other great minds in the history of cosmological speculation.

22 For Mohr (The Platonic Cosmolo)ly, 153, n. 23) the model Plato had in mind when compos-
ing the Politicus is still a top (cf. Rep. 436D), but this fails to account for the notion of stored
momentum that seems now - as distinct from when Plato wrote the Timaeus - to characterize
Plato's notion of the world's spinning motion, though it must be conceded that no exact phrase
"stored momentum" (despite the translation of Skemp ad foe.) is to be found in Plato's text.
Reading 8,' i:aur6v at 270 AS, with mss Band T, rather than with Eusebius &' i:aurov, Mohr
(141, n. 3) sees as a consequence no reference in the passage to stored momentum. However,
the reading ofEusebius stills seems to me very much preferable, on grounds of the better over-
all sense that it makes of the passage (I find it hard to see, the way Mohr does, a putative phrase
"moving throughout itself" as a proleptic reference to <Tl>t<Tµ,6,; at 273A3). If Eusebius has it
right, the notion of stored momentum is a legitimate inference from what is said, even if there
is no direct statement. In conjunction with the immediately antecedent verb aveBfi ("was let
go") the picture emerges of the Demiurge "holding," for some unspecified cosmic interval,
the world that in its spinning motion had coiled the cord from which it was suspended to the
point of ultimate tightness, before allowing it to follow its normal impetus to spin in the oppo-
site direction and in so doing allow the cord to concurrently unwind. For a reason why the
Demiurge is described as intervening in the process, see below, n. 23.
23 So the turning universe is said to be set in original motion by the Demiurge, "assisted on
its way" by him, and "let go" by him in order to begin the journey in reverse (270A); a purely
mechanistic account of the world's operations can never be acceptable to Plato.
 XXVlll UPON REFLECTION

As far as the Phaedrus is concerned, its famous argument for immor-

tality continues to generate debate. 24 My own feeling now is that it is in
fact of little concern whether the "motion" of which the Phaedrus
speaks would also cover the "motion" of the 'iXPTJ of matter in the pre-
cosmos of the Timaeus, since by the time he wrote the Phaedrus Plato
himself had very possibly - perhaps under the influence of arguments
from thinkers such as Aristotle - begun moving in the direction of belief
in the eternity of the universe as we know it. This, if true, would help to
account for the ease with which a Xenocrates could explain away the
central thesis of the Timaeus as being simply figurative, though it would
constitute no evidence in favour of such an interpretation; Plato may
well - and I myself am inclined to believe this - have simply changed his
mind in this regard, as in others, in response to the force of a better-
looking argument.2 5
Of the motions within this now unequivocally eternal universe, in
the context of which talk of a pre-cosmos is of course out of the ques-
tion, Plato can go on to argue, in a way never seen before in the dia-
logues, that the co-eternal efficient cause is (rational) soul, a form of
soul now said to be in an eternal state of self-movement. Whether
such a view also implies that the notion of a Demiurge, and in partic-
ular the notion of a Demiurge consisting of a rational soul, has been
called into question is difficult to judge. On the one hand, the argu-
ment is so general in its compass as to suggest, prima facie, that the
rational soul in question is in all its forms non-contingent (a sugges-
tion I myself adopted in the first edition), in which case there could
be no instances of rational souls contingent - even eternally contin-
gent - for their existence upon a supposed Demiurgic soul. On the
other hand, there is good reason, I now believe, for thinking that
"self-motion" may in fact have been for Plato a notion not necessarily
carrying overtones of non-contingency (see above, p. xix). If this is

24 Of particular note are the studies by Mohr, The Platonic Cosmology, 16 1-5, Steiner, Psyche,
86-9, and R. Bett, "Immortality and the nature of the soul in the Phaedrus," Phronesis 3 1
(1986) 1-26.
25 In contemporary terms, it would be as though Plato had first proposed (specifically in two
dialogues, the Timaeus and Po/iticus) a Big Bang theory of the universe and had then, in view
of what seemed a better set of arguments, opted for a Steady State theory.
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